We have SNOW!!!

It was exceptionally quiet when we woke this morning.  That stillness always makes me think of one thing - SNOW and John confirmed, on getting up that we were indeed white over.  It is March for goodness sake.  Although not unheard of since we have been living here the last few winters have been much milder and wetter.  Plants that I was uncertain about recently, in terms of survival, will probably have been seen off completely now, time will tell.  The skies this morning were full of snow and I text Mum to tell her we would need to play it by ear (or actually more by eye) as to whether she drove up with Lilian as we were supposed to be going to the Farmyard for Sunday lunch.  We have to be sensible about these things and so we decided that if the weather was ok we would meet them at the Farmyard because the minor roads up to our house were likely to still be a bit iffy.

I feel that this section of the blog should be accompanied by UB40 because when I went to get our early morning coffees I could see that Boris was playing with something on the new rug - it looked like a piece of string or something but on closer inspection it turned out to be the tail of a rat which had one leg still attached.  Further along the rug was the head and the entrails.  Deep joy we had blood on the new rug - that was easily sorted with a squirt of Omino-Blanco but more worrying was whether the rat had been poisoned prior to Boris (or maybe Charlie) having it for breakfast.

John got up and cleaned the photo-voltaic panels because even though there were some bright spells they were blanketed over so not producing any electricity.  At the moment we need as much as we can get because we have used so much more the last couple of months than we would do normally at this time of the year.

At 11.30 we made the decision (having spoken to Rachel as to the state of the roads in Kathikas) that Mum would be ok to drive up and that we would meet her and Lilian at the restaurant for 12.30.  Funnily enough Nicky and Mark were going at the same time and meeting Nicky's mum and her partner Bill.  

We had a fabulous lunch - I think the Sunday Lunches there are the nearest I get to what I could cook for myself save that they do far superior Yorkshire puddings to what I can produce.

I went for the full 4 courses - as it had been so cold in the morning I started with the soup, followed with a little salad then the full Sunday lunch topped off with some bread and butter pudding and a creme caramel!!!  DELICIOUS!

We would normally go back home for a coffee or cuppa but we stayed at our table (it was right next to Savvas's roaring fire) and had them together there so that Mum was out nearly the same amount of time as she would normally be if she comes to us first.

On our return home we had to try and warm the house up because we had not left any heating on whilst we were out.  The cats didn't seem to mind the temperature in the conservatory which had been elevated by the brief sunny spells during the course of the afternoon.

To give you some idea of how cold the house was today I went in to our bedroom to shut the curtains and light a nice candle it was a balmy 7 degrees and then went to 8 degrees - that is the coldest it has been all winter.